Former President Donald Trump’s allies are expressing their dissatisfaction with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and have leveled accusations of dishonesty against him. This comes after Johnson failed to fulfill his promise of releasing additional footage from the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol Building.
When Johnson assumed the role of Speaker in November, he had pledged to make available almost all video footage from that day, with the exception of any content that could compromise Capitol security or endanger private citizens by revealing sensitive information.
“When I ran for Speaker, I promised to make accessible to the American people the 44,000 hours of video from Capitol Hill security taken on January 6, 2021,” Johnson noted in a statement on November 17, as Newsweek reports. “Truth and transparency are critical. We will begin immediately posting video on a public website and move as quickly as possible to add to the website nearly all of the footage in more than 40,000 hours.”
The House Committee on House Administration initially released 90 hours of footage on the same day. However, after two months, no additional footage has been made available. Raj Shah, Johnson’s deputy chief of staff for communications, stated that faces in the public viewing room footage should be blurred to protect private citizens from retaliation.
The Department of Justice already has access to the raw footage from January 6, 2021. Despite this, some individuals close to the former president are becoming frustrated with the lack of progress in releasing more video footage. In an interview, far-right activist Laura Loomer described the failure to release additional footage as a form of “gaslighting.”
“Out of anybody on the right, I’ve been the biggest critic of Mike Johnson since day one,” she told the outlet. “The Republican Party is incompetent. Mike Johnson is using the tapes as gaslighting to manipulate the base to make them think they’re going to do something [about January 6].”
She added: “You mean to tell me we can run surveillance on every American but can’t come up with a government database that will have an open source and web hosting location for 44,000 hours of footage? It’s BS.”
Newsweek reported that Loomer made reference to the recent approval of the National Defense Authorization Act, commonly known as the annual defense funding bill, which potentially grants the FBI the authority to persist in conducting surveillance on American citizens. Additionally, Loomer utilized the X platform during the weekend to label Johnson as a “liar.”
She also quoted Johnson, who said, “Today, I am keeping my promise to the American people and making all the January 6th tapes available to ALL Americans.” She then responded: “[Johnson], we still don’t have the J6 tapes. You lied to the American people. Don’t make promises you have no intention of keeping.”
Jeff Clark, a former member of the Trump administration and a co-defendant in the alleged election interference charges filed in Fulton County, Georgia, also utilized the platform to express his dissatisfaction regarding the limited availability of released footage.
“On this, the third anniversary, of January 6, it would mean a great deal to the American people if (Johnson) made good on his promise and released all of the footage from the Capitol that day,” he wrote. “We need radical transparency. It’s been long enough.”
